


A Man's Worth

by thedevilchicken



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Bargaining, M/M, Pre-Canon, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 15:38:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7444597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started when Billy drew the short straw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Man's Worth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hiddencait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiddencait/gifts).



It started when Billy drew the short straw. 

There were eight men on the Walrus who could read and six of those who could write, including Flint, but the captain didn't draw. There were whispers in the crew that he should have, that it wasn't right if he didn't draw lots like the rest of them did because bugger that for a shilling if the red-haired bastard fancied himself above them, but Billy shut them all up quickly: the captain was the one who'd given the order, and they were the ones who'd decided to draw for carrying that order out. It wasn't the captain's fault they couldn't make a reasoned decision between them if their lives depended on it. That was the reason they had a bloody captain in the first place. 

He drew the short straw as they loitered on deck by the capstan, peered at by the men fixing up the rigging from its last encounter with another ship's long guns like they'd been asked to choose a man to throw overboard with grape shot in his pockets when it was nothing of the kind. Frankly, if they hadn't insisted that they draw for it then he'd've gone ahead and volunteered. Sometimes shipboard decisions were a fucking disaster. What Flint had thought he was doing, leaving it up to the five of them, Billy had no idea. Sometimes Flint's decisions were a fucking disaster, too, but then again, he was the captain. That meant something.

So, it wasn't that he wanted to do it, he thought as he pulled ashore in the ship's launch around dusk. It wasn't that he somehow relished the idea, he thought as he strode down the beach toward the Ranger's camp, the setting sun and sea-salt breeze stinging in his eyes. It was just that decisions had to be made and Flint wanted that long nine for a stern chaser. It was just that of the five literate men after Flint, one of them signed his name with an X. And of the rest there was Billy, and three of them who sketched out their letters so ponderously that there was more chance of Billy sailing back to England in a leaky skiff and getting himself crowned the one true king than there was of either of them taking dictation. Heaven help them if they needed to note down a response.

There was a man at the makeshift doorway into Vane's tent whose face Billy didn't recognise, though he supposed after some time one pirate's face had begun to blend into another if they weren't his brothers on the Walrus. The man scowled when Billy gave him his name, when he said _it's Billy Bones of the Walrus_ , but the surly ass ducked into the tent nonetheless. When he came back out again, he spat into the sand and muttered, "The captain'll see you, more fool him." 

Billy shook his head as he pulled back the tent flap, and he stepped inside out of the warm, waning sunlight. It was warmer still inside without the breeze, and smelled like rum and smoke and leather and sex in a way that filled up Billy's head and made his stomach clench and tighten. Charles Vane was sitting at a desk half-naked in the half-light, smoking, with his bare feet up and a glass in one hand. Of course he was.

"So, what do you want, Billy Bones of the Walrus?" he asked, with a mocking little smile. The sod already knew, of course, because Flint had made it very clear. The problem was, Eleanor Guthrie refused to intervene, and so the frustrating process of negotiations had then begun.

Billy fished the note from his pocket and put it down on the desk. He didn't quite slap it down against the wood, he wasn't quite rude about it, but he wasn't far off. 

"From Flint," he said, and then stepped away. He tucked his hands behind his back and pulled himself up tall, like that kind of trick made any difference to a man like Vane. 

Vane eyed the paper suspiciously just for a moment, eyed Billy with the same amused-suspicious air, then he broke the seal and he unfolded it and read, his lips moving with the words. He flung it back down onto the desktop and sat back hard enough in his tall-backed chair to make it rock precariously. 

"Tell him the answer's _fuck you_ ," Vane said, and he polished off what was left of the rum in his glass. He did it haphazardly, already half drunk, and spilled it down his bare chest, then rubbed it away with the heel of his hand and licked it off his skin while Billy watched. "No, wait. Write that down instead." He sat back up, pulled his feet from the desk and pushed the note over the tabletop in Billy's direction. His rum-sticky fingers stuck to the paper, and once he'd sorted that out he rubbed them idly against the worn leather of his trousers. 

"Do I look like your secretary?" Billy asked, eyeing him, hands on hips. 

"Just fucking do it," Vane replied, amused, head tilted, hands on leather-clad thighs. 

There was no logical reason for him to do it, but in the end he did it anyway. He leaned over and dragged the inkwell and the quill across the desk, he dipped the nib and wrote an elegant _fuck you_ across the paper, there underneath where Flint had signed his name. He blotted it and then Vane inspected it like he was half convinced he'd've written down some other words instead, but there it was. Vane chuckled as he signed his name to it, then Billy blotted that, too. 

Vane poured himself another drink then fished up second cup and poured a second measure. He pushed it over the desk to Billy, who eyed it just like poison as he put the note back into his pocket. 

"It won't kill you," Vane said. 

"I'd best get back," Billy replied, so he didn't have to say he didn't drink with crews that weren't his own. And he turned and he left and he left the liquor sitting where it was. 

Flint grumbled at the response but he looked like he'd expected it, or something like it at the very least. And then, in the morning, he sent Billy back to shore with another letter, done up with bright red wax and a seal he'd probably taken from some captured captain's desk like half the things that they all owned. Billy went back, had the men who'd drawn the longer straws do the rowing for him since he had the dirty work to do, then strode back down the beach again. The man at the tent was different, but just as fucking surly. 

"Captain's sleeping," he said, looking up from his spot on the sand. Some guard he was, Billy thought; if he'd wanted to get past him, all it would've taken was a boot to his jaw. In that position, he couldn't even have drawn his sword, let alone caught him with it.

"I'll wait," he said.

"You'll be waiting a fucking long time." 

Billy took a seat in the sand, rested up against a post and pulled a book from his back pocket. For the time being he had nothing better to do but wait.

He waited an hour, then he waited two. And then, when one was two was nearly three, there was a grumble from inside the tent and Vane finally surfaced, pushed out into the sun and made a beeline straight down to the sea. He unbuckled his belt and shucked off his leather trousers and he waded out naked till he was standing chest-deep, dunked his head under the water while Billy watched over the top of his book, acting that he wasn't. Vane swam, rubbed his face and his underarms and his chest and his cock, ran his hands through his hair and shook it out, and ten minutes later he strode back up there, still naked as the day he was born with his trousers slung over his shoulder, dripping water on the sand every step of the way. 

"Billy Bones," he said, glancing at him as he pulled the tent open. "What's your whoreson captain want from me now?"

They went inside and Billy pulled the letter from his pocket while Vane dried himself with a cloth that might have been a shirt at one point in its life. Billy put the letter down on the desk and once Vane's leather trousers were firmly back in place, he opened it as he stood there still barefoot and bare-chested like clothing was for everyone in the world but him. He read it, and he dropped it on the desk with a faint, smug smile as his wet hair dripped saltwater down his chest, over his abdomen, down to the waist of his trousers. Billy watched it. When Vane caught him watching, he just looked amused.

"Tell him _fuck you, the answer's still no_ ," he said, and he dropped down into his seat with a worrying creak of the wood. He nodded curtly at the paper. "Write it down, Billy Bones. Exactly what I said."

So Billy wrote it. He folded it. He ignored another cup of rum that Vane poured out for him and he turned and went back to the Walrus. Flint grumbled at the response and then spent an hour composing another of his own there in his cabin, the quill pen scratch-scratch-scratching while Billy ate from an old metal plate and watched him at it. His captain was nothing like Charles Vane, at least, strong-willed and fair and not some rum-soaked lush who fought for fun. Maybe Flint wasn't liked by their crew the way that Vane was by his, but popularity was a fickle mistress, Billy thought. And Flint hadn't fucked Eleanor Guthrie and left them scouring the seas for scraps, not that Vane looked the worse for it at all. They'd end up together again, no doubt, that on-again, off-again, fucked up relationship that every pirate in Nassau knew they had and then he'd be back in favour. Flint, however, was a businessman. Vane was sometimes barely a man. 

When Flint was finished writing, he ordered Billy back again, and so Billy dutifully did as he was told. He refused another drink and wrote another note of Vane's reply, Vane's words in Billy's fine hand, and Vane left his chair and leaned half his chest against half of Billy's back to read the words he'd written, uncomfortably close. The words approved, Vane took the quill from Billy's hand, Vane's weather-beaten fingers brushing at his palm, his wrist. Billy opened his mouth to object to it, to say something though fuck knew what he'd meant to say; Vane's mouth twisted in a dark, self-satisfied smile as his signed his name on the paper. Billy didn't push him away. When Vane's mouth met the crook of Billy's neck from behind him, when his teeth raked his skin, when his worn palm found Billy's stubble-scratchy throat, he knew he should have. Vane stepped away instead.

Vane's answer was still no, of course, so Flint wrote yet another letter. Billy went back again the following morning and he waited in the sun with a book he barely read a word of and when Vane stirred an hour later, he left the tent and smirked in Billy's direction as if he knew he'd watch what he'd do next. He washed in the sea and then he came back naked up the beach, not a single one of the Ranger men finding there was anything odd in it at all. Billy did watch. Vane cut a fine figure, at least that much he could admit, lean muscle and tanned skin and a brand by one shoulder. What frustrated him was Vane clearly knew he knew it.

Vane didn't dress. He dried himself off but he didn't dress afterwards, not even in the partial way he'd done before, trousers over bare skin but no boots, no shirt. He sat himself down on the edge of the table, swinging his feet as he poured a glass of fresh water and drank it down in one like it was a glass of white rum. Then he read the note. 

"Tell him _I'm not a fucking idiot, I know what the gun's worth_ ," he said, as he let the paper fall from his hand and drift down onto the desk by his hip. "Write that down, Billy." 

Billy didn't require instruction; he knew what was expected. He fetched the quill and ink and he reached for the paper and as he did so, the back of his hand brushed Vane's bare hip. He looked at Vane. Vane looked back. Then Vane slipped back down from the table and he squared up to him, made Billy take a step back almost instinctively though honestly, he was taller and broader and quite likely stronger, not to mention the one with a knife in his belt, and Captain Vane, for all his fearsome reputation, was standing there stark naked. 

Vane rubbed his face as he looked up at him, scratched at the stubble on his chin and his neck as he narrowed his eyes and studied him. Billy had heard rumours because they'd all heard rumours, about how Vane was lovesick for the governor's daughter, about tavern girls and whores but then a whisper of something else, men that he'd had in Port Royal or Tortuga, former captains, crewmen now dead and unable to tell their tales. As Vane's hands went to Billy's waist, he was thinking about the things he'd heard and he flinched away and Vane chuckled then he tried again. He pulled the knife from Billy's belt, and Billy let him do that, watched him twist to put it down on the desk behind him. Vane unbuckled his belt, and Billy caught his wrists in his hands. 

"I should write that reply," he said, his mouth dry, and he stepped away to retrieve the quill. Vane snorted in amusement and went back to his chair. Three minutes later, Billy beat his retreat. 

The answer was no and so Flint sent him back again that afternoon for yet another no. He arrived while the sun was still high and Vane was dealing with Ranger business, so he sat cross-legged in the sand and rubbed at the ink stains on his fingers left there by Vane's less than perfect quill. When Vane's quartermaster and his bosun and his first mate all left the tent, Vane stepped outside too, fully clothed in shirt and boots and trousers for the first time in days, at least that Billy had seen. Billy looked up. Vane looked down. 

"He's a persistent son of a bitch, I'll give him that," Vane said, and held out his hand. "Why doesn't he just buy from someone else?"

Billy hesitated, looking at Vane's hand. Vane shook his head at him, tossed back his hair, then put out his hand again. This time, Billy reached up and clasped Vane's wrist; Vane hauled him up to his feet on the sand, pulled him up too close and barely contained a smirk of amusement as Billy took a step away. And then they went inside. 

It was just the same as it always was, Vane at his desk saying _no_ in no uncertain terms, a glass offered and refused, another note that Billy took down and Vane signed after. But this time, when Vane unbuckled Billy's belt, he stood by and let him do it. When Vane slipped one hand in under the waist of Billy's trousers, he let him do that too. His callused fingertips brushed down at the base of Billy's cock and that was when he stopped him, when he pulled Vane's hand back by his wrists and almost tripped over his own damned feet in the process of it. 

"The captain'll be waiting," Billy said. 

Vane leaned back against his desk. "So am I," he said. 

He started off in his hammock that night, below deck, swinging faintly with the roll of the waves beneath the ship's keel. He couldn't sleep for the thought of Vane's hands, for the look on Vane's face in the low light inside his tent, for the fact his cock swelled with the ridiculous thought of Vane's mouth his bare skin, of things the man might've done with other men in other ports that weren't Nassau, or maybe they were. He went up on deck, boots thumping against the planks, and stood at the rail looking out toward Nassau. If they didn't have their long nine in a few more days, a week at most, they'd have completed stores and Flint would leave, aggravated as he usually was by Captain Vane. Billy could understand why, he thought. The man was infuriating. Everything was a whim with him, and not from reason. 

He climbed the rigging after that, went up the sheets and shrouds into the maintop and relieved the watch to sit himself down above the neatly furled sail. The Walrus men weren't sloppy in their work in the main, after all, even if there was a tendency to grumble when they thought they should be off on land with the ladies. He sighed as he settled there, his legs dangling over the edge, and looked down to the deck below. Once upon a time the drop had seemed vertiginous, but now mastheads and rails and sails and rigging were all part of the fabric of his life, like Nassau was, like the Walrus was, like sand in his boots and in his hair, and the ringing in his ears whenever he fired his pistol. 

He looked out to sea, into the dark, so he wouldn't see the lights in the Ranger's camp, so he wouldn't think about the Ranger's captain. But he thought about him, his mouth and hands and hair and skin, found himself rubbing himself over the tough fabric of his trousers. He thought about Vane's body wet from the sea, about the friction of his own hands on drying skin. He thought about pushing Vane down over the edge of his desk there in that tent, about his hands on Vane's back, his fingers in his hair, how he'd unbuckle his own damned belt that time. He came with his mouth pressed into the crook of his elbow to stifle the sound, without so much as thinking of unbuttoning his trousers. He wasn't much of a watchman that night. 

Billy went back _again_ the morning after that with another letter from his captain sealed up with red wax, and he caught Vane heading for the water.

"Join me," Vane said, barely even looking in Billy's direction as he started tugging off his trousers, where the dry sand started to turn wet. And to Vane's surprise, to Billy's very great surprise, he started to do exactly that. He had not a single idea why he would, why he dropped his knife to the sand and pulled off his shirt, why he dropped his boots and his trousers and walked naked through the surf. A quick glance back over his shoulder told him none of the Rangers gave a fuck, however; the only one who did was him, his heart hammering hard in his chest. Or maybe Vane did. He wasn't usually difficult to read. 

The chill of the water against his skin felt better than he'd expected, given the circumstances, given that Vane was watching. Then they went farther out, wary of the tide though it didn't pull too strongly there in Nassau. Vane ducked under the water and soaked his hair, then he dove and swam in closer, turned about him like an eel or maybe, just maybe, more like a sharp-toothed shark. His teeth bared in a grin when he surfaced again and they trod water, watching each other in the sun, too close for it to be close to decent but far enough from shore that it would have taken a glass to see the details. Vane went closer. Vane's hands slipped over Billy's hips beneath the water, his nails raked down low over Billy's abdomen. 

"You've got a letter for me, yeah?" Vane said, amused, as his fingertips walked down the length of Billy's cock. "I think I'd better read it." 

They swam back to the beach. And as they walked back to Vane's tent, barefoot on the sun-warm sand, Billy's clothes in a haphazard pile that he held in front to salvage just a shred of his modesty, Billy couldn't tell if he'd've let him do it or not. When they went inside, Vane threw him a cloth and he turned his back as he dried himself. Vane put his hands on him and made him flinch, put his hands on Billy's shoulders and trailed them down over his back, gripped his hips, pressed up against him. Vane leaned up against him and his teeth grazed the nape of Billy's neck. 

"Teach me to write like you do," Vane said, murmured against Billy's skin. "There's money in it for you."

"Ask Rackham," Billy replied, as Vane's palms skimmed down his chest, over his abdomen, as the fingers of one hand dipped down to wrap around the length of him. 

"I said I wanted to write like you, not like Jack Rackham."

He should've said no. It would've made more sense that way, at least, and he'd've been on his way back to the Walrus ten times more quickly for it with yet another no for Flint, he couldn't have the blasted gun. What he did instead was sit down naked at Charles Vane's desk and spend an hour teaching him the formation of letters in the alphabet so they wouldn't look like an inky crab had scuttled clear across the page. Vane improved, but afterwards it was still Billy who wrote the reply to Flint. It was Billy who wrote it while Vane stood, while Vane leaned in, while Vane's ink-stained fingers wrapped around his cock and stroked him. Billy shuddered as he formed the words. His hand shook and Vane grinned against his shoulder, chuckled by his ear. When he came, he fucked up the note with an ink spot so badly that Vane gave him a new sheet to write on. And then, once he'd dressed, Billy left. He was so damned unsettled that he almost forgot to take the note. Vane handed it to him with two worn coins and Billy frowned but didn't say he was worth five times as much.

He was back again that afternoon and they wrote again, side by side at the table, one of Vane's hands at the small of Billy's back. He was back again the morning after and they wrote again, after they'd swum out into the bay again and failed to wash the ink from any of their black-stained fingers. He was back again that night and they wrote _again_ , as Vane's teeth caught the lobe of Billy's ear, as his hands went under Billy's shirt. When Billy wrote down his reply, Vane went down on his knees between Billy's bare legs. Vane's stubbled jaw grazed at the inside of Billy's thigh, his mouth found the head of Billy's cock, and Billy fought to keep a steady hand throughout. He failed. When he came, Vane's hands tight at his thighs, Vane's tongue teasing circles, he ruined another letter. 

He was there again that afternoon, after another meeting of the Ranger men. They wrote there again, wrote lines of Shakespeare, poetry, some Latin though Billy wasn't sure he had the patience to teach a language to a man like Vane or that Vane had the patience to learn it. Vane sat himself in Billy's lap there on the chair, straddled his thighs and nipped his neck with his teeth and all Billy could do was abandon his quill, tangle his fingers in Vane's hair. He pulled back Vane's head by it, stretched out his throat with it, and Vane didn't so much as struggle. He chuckled instead, low in his chest, and all Billy could do was press his mouth to Vane's throat though he should've upended him onto the tent's sandy floor and left him there just like that. He didn't mean to do it, and afterwards felt some remorse for being goaded into it. But when he sucked at Vane's collarbone, his skin tasted of hot, like sea salt and rum. 

In the morning, when Billy returned to the camp from the Walrus and Vane finally awoke, they went down to the sea again. There was a bruise at his collarbone, purple on his tanned skin, that Vane didn't even try to hide. And after, inside the tent, Vane dried Billy's skin and he pushed him down and Billy let him do it, though he caught Vane's wrist and took him with him, and they landed skin on skin. Vane pushed up on his hands and looked at him, and then he moved away just for a moment; when he returned, he wrote out all the words he was meant to practice there on Billy's skin, with a fingertip dipped into a cup of dark red wine. Then he licked those lines and made Billy shiver. Vane offered him a glass of his own, but Billy refused. 

That evening, Billy was back again, another letter with another offer that they all knew Vane would reject and all that Billy could possibly think was that Flint hoped he'd wear him down. Vane stroked himself while Billy wrote down his response, his trousers pushed down to his knees. Billy watched him from the corner of his eye, watched him squeeze at the head of his cock almost roughly, heard him make himself moan and he had no bloody idea if Vane had done that for his benefit or his own. Billy put down the quill and Vane's heavy-lidded eyes came open as he stood to take the quill instead. He signed his name, bent down over the desk. And Billy couldn't help himself, as much as he knew he ought to: he pushed his clothed cock up against Vane's bare arse and he rubbed against him. 

He came like that, one hand by Vane's on the desktop, smearing the ink on the newly signed letter, the other one wrapped tight around Vane's cock. He made Vane come and he made himself come, still clothed, just rubbing up against him, the friction of it enough and more besides. That night he went to sleep with what it felt like in his mind, with the heat of Vane's skin, the pulse of his cock, and in the morning he went back again, another letter, another day. When Vane bent to sign his name, Billy pressed his bare cock up against Vane instead. 

Vane looked at him sharply, over his shoulder, and Billy would've stopped then if he'd asked him to, came close to stopping anyway. Instead, Vane reached for a stoppered vial of oil that he handed to him. Instead, Billy slicked himself and slicked Vane's arse and pushed inside him. He thrust in him, hot and breathless, bucked his hips, made the desk shift in the sand, made the ink topple over and flood across the desktop, but neither of them cared a damn, at least not till they'd finished. Afterwards, Billy mopped up the ink and stained his palm, black seeping into every line. A cup of rum washed most of it away, and Vane had another bottle. 

Billy had him again that afternoon, on their hands and knees on Vane's makeshift bed. Vane rode him the morning after that, one knee planted firm either side of Billy's hips. And still the long nine was not forthcoming; perhaps Flint would give it up, but Billy thought perhaps he was just too stubborn to. Every time he took back another note, Billy wondered if that might be the last. 

The next evening, Billy went again just after dusk, with a lantern swinging in the light sea breeze at the launch's prow. When Vane's man announced him, Vane just shouted, "Fuck's sake, Billy, come in." The Ranger man left the tent with a frown and Billy went inside instead. 

There was food on the desk and Vane was eating, drinking, spearing chunks of meat from a bowl of something almost like stew with the point of a knife. He offered him a bite; Billy declined. He offered him a glass and a seat in that order and Billy declined those, too. There was salt in Vane's hair from his daily morning swim and salt marks where it'd dried into the leather cuffs around his wrists. Billy's boots had had marks just the same almost every day of his life at sea. The two of them were very different people, Billy knew that, but in some ways they were still alike.

Vane gave up the food half-eaten. He gave up the glass half-drunk. He left his chair and he went around the desk and he eased the knife from Billy's belt and tossed it onto his ink-stained tabletop. He unbuckled Billy's belt. He untucked Billy's shirt. He undressed him bit by bit and piece by piece till he was naked there in the flickering lamplight, and then he pulled off his own clothes to match. Billy went down on his back on the bed and when Vane joined him, when Vane knelt between his thighs, when he unstoppered the bottle and slicked his cock with oil, he knew what Vane intended; he didn't object. His cock ached at the idea. He'd been imagining it for a fucking fortnight, after all. 

Vane pushed into him, his jaw clenched, his teeth bared, his hair hanging down, like a fucking animal. Billy wrapped his legs around Vane's waist, crossed his ankles and pulled, took him deeper, made both of them gasp, made both of them groan. Billy had had other men before, but none who'd made him so fucking crazy. Billy had had other men before, but none of them had been like Charles Vane. Billy jerked and came all over his own stomach; Vane bucked and came still pushed up deep inside him. 

And afterwards, once they'd caught their breath and left the bed, Vane read the note. Billy reached for the quill. 

"So, what's it this time?" Billy asked, already inking up the nib. " _Fuck you and the ship you sailed in on_?"

Vane smiled; he took the quill. And when he gave the paper back for blotting, what he'd written said: _Give me Billy Bones for a week, no questions asked, and you can have your fucking gun for free_. He'd signed his name beneath it. 

Billy's brows raised in surprise, so Vane raised his own at him, deliberately. He gestured vaguely at the paper. 

"That's my first and final offer," he said. "See he gets it, Billy. I'm not writing that down again."

Flint took the offer, no questions asked. The captain had his long nine. 

In the morning, Billy went down the ship's side into the launch and his four semi-literate brothers rowed him to shore - he thought, perhaps, he owed the four of them a debt, and he'd never been as pleased he'd drawn the short straw in his life. As he stepped out, a team of Rangers stepped up with the gun in tow and Billy left them to it; he went straight to Vane's tent, in long strides down a familiar stretch of beach. He stepped past the man at the door and he went inside, no announcements required, not now, not any longer. There was no letter to deliver. Billy was delivering himself. 

This time, when Vane offered him a seat, he sat down. This time, when Vane offered him a drink, he took it and he drank it. He put out the glass for another, so Vane laughed and poured him one. 

"A week of my time for a gun," Billy said, and held out his glass for a third. He tried to sound appalled at the trade, but his ability to lie had its limits and it appeared that this was one of them.

Vane poured and spilled it over Billy's fingers. From the look on Vane's face as he leaned in to lick it off, he spilled it there on purpose. And then he straddled Billy's lap and he pressed his mouth to his, all sea salt and rum and the burn of his stubble. Billy's hands found Vane's long hair and tugged and made him chuckle lowly. 

"A week of my time for a gun," Billy repeated, his mouth pressed to Vane's throat. "That's what you wanted?"

"It's good for a man to know his value," Vane replied, amused, his hands at Billy's belt. "You're worth a long nine."

"So that's what I'm worth to you?"

Vane grinned sharply. His fingers slipped around the length of Billy's cock. They pulled off their clothes piece by piece, bit by bit. They went to Vane's bed, stretched out, skin on skin. Vane pushed up on top of him, and Billy couldn't see a reason to complain.

"That's what you're worth to Flint," Vane said. "Let's find out what you're worth to me."

He should've been insulted, but the fact was that he wasn't. A week of a bosun's time in harbour for a reliable gun wasn't exactly a poor trade, and Billy knew if he hadn't been intrigued, he could've just said no; a pirate ship wasn't a democracy, but Flint could never have held him to it. If he'd tried, he'd've lost his precious fucking gun _and_ the best damn bosun in Nassau. 

And, what was more, he knew if Vane hadn't wanted what he wanted from him, he'd've hung onto that fucking gun till the very bitter end just to piss off Flint. Billy Bones was worth a long nine, yes, and worth Vane giving up his petty revenge. Billy smiled as Vane's teeth scraped hungry at his neck. That meant something. 

And besides, he had a week to prove his worth.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is related to a quote by Thomas Hobbes: "The value or worth of a man is, as of all other things, his Price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his Power".


End file.
